Running to my Roots-Part One

Tags

adoption, birthfather, cultural heritage, finding family, Italian heritage, Italy, recovery, running

In Italy, I traveled through miles of my birth family’s history…

As an adult adoptee looking back, one of my regrets was not growing up with my Italian heritage. In my memoir The Goodbye Baby: Adoptee Diaries, I lamented this “deprivation.” However, I DID at last meet my Italian-American birthfather just a few years before he passed away. I was able to travel with him to Abruzzo, where he was born.
When organizing my office last week, I came across this account, written in 2007 but never before published. As you, my readers, will see, I was heavily into running at the time. In retrospect, I realize how special that father-daughter journey it was, what a privilege that I got this glimpse of my heritage. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed re-living the experience…

Growing up adopted, relived through diary entires

I was an adopted child, five years old when my new parents took over. I met my biological father many years later. Together we visited the town in Italy where he was born, and there I spent an unforgettable week getting to know cousins and doing a lot of running. Giovanni Cecchini began life in the tiny village of San Martino Sulla Maruccina. It’s on the east side of the Italian boot, 17 miles from the Adriatic Sea. Even though I had been adopted by a loving mom and dad and my young life improved dramatically, I longed for many years to find out more about my heritage. Shortly before Giovanni’s death, that wish came true.
Giovanni left the old country at age two. He’d returned to his home village every year since World War II. I spent most of my life without knowing him. Our reunion did not bring the communication I’d hoped for. My father, in ill health, was taciturn and grouchy. Despite this disappointment, I was able to get in touch with my roots. And I discovered the joys of running in Italy.
Being with long-lost Italian cousins, hiking through the fields, hills and olive groves that had belonged to my ancestors, enjoying the scenic beauty of San Martino, with snowcapped mountains to the west and the sea to the east were magical. Best of all, however, was running in my newly-discovered native homeland.
Nikes on my feet, I explored the streets and pathways of tiny San Martino (population 800) as well as nearby countryside. No doubt I was an odd sight. I like to think of myself as the first American to have jogged through the village for the sake of simply running. If the citizens of San Martino were running, it would be to catch a stray sheep, goat or child.
For one thing, the villagers are elderly. The young leave for Pescara or Chieti or Guardiagrele to attend school or take jobs. Furthermore, why would people need to run? The San Martino way of life incorporates vigorous outdoor activities: harvesting olives, gathering firewood, tending animals, plowing fields. My spoken Italian was not versatile enough to know what the natives thought of my running through their streets every day.
But run for the sport of it I did, and for the sheer beauty of the landscape. Running was not only a way to enjoy the incredibly beautiful countryside but also to work off the delicious pasta consumed during three-hour lunches.
San Martino-ans are not into lycra and singlets, so early each morning I donned pedal pushers and an oversized t-shirt borrowed from my teenage sons. I decided it was better to look like a nerd than a shameless exhibitionist. Shortly after the roosters’ last crowing, I left my Aunt Guisipina’s house and jogged up a narrow cobblestone road to the main street of San Martino. Sweeping their porches, small elderly ladies in black stared at me, first in disbelief, then with amusement. After a day or so, they began greeting me with a friendly “Buon Giorno.”

**************************************

Looking at the world through adoption-colored glasses.

November is National Adoption Month, so I’m publishing another adoption-themed post from the past. The trip to Italy was life-changing, life affirming, and inspirational. Join me, Elaine Pinkerton, on alternate Mondays for adoptee perspectives.

Feedback is invited. Click at the top right to leave your comments.

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Welcome to Fall!

Tags

adoptee, Autumn, Dealing with Adoption, English Romantic Era, John Keats, Poetry, recovery, Seasons, University of Virginia

For today’s post, I’m bringing forth a poem I’ve loved ever since studying it as an English major at the University of Virginia. This ode speaks to one at many levels; for me—don’t ask me just how— it ties in to the theme of my blog an adoption journey.
As time unfolds, we adopt and embrace each season. During the current pandemic era, I’ve been revisiting my favorite literature. John Keats, who lived from 1795-1821, created some of the most beautiful poetry of the Romantic Era. This tribute to the season has been called “the most serenely flawless poem in English.” Enjoy.

Sunrise in Late September

Ode to Autumn

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease;

For Summer has o’erbrimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;
20
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river-sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on Adoption and Life

Lessons of the Labyrinth

Tags

adoptee, Adoptee Recovery, adoptee restoration, birthparents, labyrinth, recovery

“The end is the beginning,” – T.S. Eliot
Have you ever felt blindsided by life’s events? The deaths of people closest to me, all

The Labyrinth dates back 6,000 years.

happening in just a few years, was nearly unbearable. My adoptive parents, birthparents and husband passed away. How could I go on living? Did I even deserve to? In 2007, following the losses, I built a spiral walking path in my back yard and so it happened that the Labyrinth gave me a way.
The simple act of walking in to the center and then back out, helped clear my mind and reset my emotions. The labyrinth, though profound, is also very simple. When you come to the center of the spiral path, you reverse directions and walk back out.
In my case, the rhythm of that slow walking, combined with breathing deeply and feeling the air around me, gradually changed sadness to something like thoughtfulness. The sharp, ragged pain went away, and a feeling of acceptance took over. Through the days, weeks, months, and years, the labyrinth has been a way for me to tap the inner wisdom that is all too easy to ignore.
So powerful an influence was the labyrinth that I studied with Lauren Artress,
President and Founder of Veriditas, The Voice of the Labyrinth Movement. I read her books on the labyrinth, became a labyrinth facilitator, and hosted walks for friends in my own spiral path.
When I “went public” with my adoption story in The Goodbye Baby: Adoptee Diaries, I wrongly assumed that I’d solved the riddle of my adoption. I’d put my heart and soul into exposing my adoptee past. Through writing the book, I was finally able to forgive myself for a lifetime of oversensitivity about being an adoptee. In retrospect, I accepted the fact that reunions with both of my birthparents, while not a total failure, were not what I’d hoped they would be. I learned to accept even that. In the dealing with adoption department, I was done, finished, complete.
A friend will ask me if I’m “cured” or “over” the issues of adoption. The answer is “Maybe” or “Sometimes.” Like life itself, dealing with adoption is a work in progress. Thanks to walking the labyrinth, I am better able to recognize the negative adoption-induced feelings that come back to haunt. I have learned that those emotions are like the weather, ever-changing. Behind the clouds, sunshine awaits.
That said, I am not sure that one ever lets go of the “adoptee” status. For me, it is who I am. Of the hundreds of adoption stories I’ve read, it is as integral as the color of ones eyes. It doesn’t go away. So, while not “cured,”  I am now “accepting.”
Much of my life was shadowed by an underlying victim mentality. Now, I feel that obstacles forged an inner strength I’d lacked and made me more who I am. I have come to regard being adopted as a gift, not a curse. In this journey toward wholeness and self-acceptance, nothing has been a better teacher than the labyrinth.

The Labyrinth brings Clarity and Peace. In 2008, Elaine became a certified Labyrinth Facilitator.

Adopted by the Cat

Tags

adoptee, adoption, Anticipation, Cats, Comfort, Dealing with Adoption, Hiking, Injury, Patience, Purring, recovery, Rescue

Cats make the best nurses. -Author Peggy vanHulsteyn

Cats create purr vibrations within a range of 20-140 Hz, known to be medically therapeutic.

A cat purring on your lap is more healing as the vibrations you are receiving are of our love and contentment. – St. Francis of Assisi

If you put a cat and a bunch of broken bones in the same room, the bones will heal.
-Old Veterinary Adage

*******************************************************************

Mr. Charlie Chapman,
Cat Practitioner

I’ve always loved Autumn in Santa Fe, New Mexico-my hometown since 1967. In the past I’ve hiked my way through October, November, and early December, enjoying the crisp air, golden aspen leaves, the first snowfalls. It was a time full of anticipation, as I looked forward to skiing and snowshoeing. Not this year, however. Today marks two months since a serious hiking accident that twisted and sprained the muscles of my torso and resulted in a lumbar vertebra stress fracture-> https://tinyurl.com/yb2ruz3k Since then, I’ve been consumed with recovery.
During this long, lonely recuperation process, a surprising hero has come to the rescue: Charlie Chapman, who’s promoted himself from ordinary house cat to NURSE CHAPMAN. Ever since I came home from the ER, broken in body and spirit, he’s been by my side. He’s watched as I’ve gone from barely being able to walk from room to room in the house, to leaving on short walks around the neighborhood. He’s witnessed my exhaustion at performing the simplest tasks. If I have to flop on the bed to rest, he naps next to me. His purrs often lull me to sleep. He cuddles on the side of me that’s currently suffering most. It’s as if he’s trying to inject cat love into my aching torso. He’s on duty all day, all night, week after week, month after month.

The doctor prescribed rest. Here! Follow my example.

The Neurologist predicted that it would take three months for my injury to heal, and in the meantime I’m trying everything to relieve the relentless pain: physical therapy, water workouts, Reiki, acupuncture, various medications and salves. They help temporarily but don’t seem to speed healing. What IS helping? My cat!
A couple weeks ago, I took “Nurse Chapman” to Cedarwood Animal Clinic for an ongoing gastrointestinal problem. The vet sent a stool specimen to the lab to see if there was an infection. Nothing showed up. Finally, it was concluded that kitty’s diarrhea was due to stress. I realized that by not getting better myself, I was upsetting HIM! At that point, I decided to act as though I were better, to do an extreme attitude adjustment. It was bad enough that I was under the weather. I didn’t want to make my cat ill as well. So far, it seems to be working. Chapman’s problem has cleared up; I can only hope that my vertebra is mending. The lumbar stress fracture one of those things that can and probably will knit back together. Hopefully, both Chapman and I will be well by the end of next month. Then he can go back to his role as adored house cat, not a nurse on duty 23/7, and I can go back to longer walks and HIKING.
That would be the PURR-fect Christmas present for us both!

****

Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on the world as seen through adoption colored glasses.

 

I Should have Stayed Home

Tags

Accident, adoptee, friends, Gratitude, Hiking, Nambe Lake, recovery, Rio Nambe, Riverbed, Santa Fe National Forest

Readers who’ve been following The Goodbye Baby blog know that I’ve adopted hiking as an essential part of life. But for now, it’s all I can do to walk a mile. I’ve been a prisoner of my house, slowly recovering from the worst hiking injury in 50 years of roaming around in the mountains. Here’s THE SHORT VERSION…

Nambe Lake was our destination on that fateful September 22nd

The first day of Autumn, as I was hiking uphill to Nambe Lake (11,374 feet), I
Tripped
Slipped
Flipped
Dipped

and ending up feeling much like Kafka’s unfortunate narrator Gregor Samsa who awoke one morning to find himself transformed…into a gigantic insect. -(Metamorphis)

THE LONG VERSION…
During the jolting, I must have closed my eyes. No one witnessed my fall. As I try to piece things together, this, it seems to me, is what happened: While climbing along the creek bank , I slipped on something (I’ll never know whether it was a root or boulder), twisted myself into a downhill orientation, contorted, and ended face-up, IN THE CREEK. On rocks and logs, thankfully cushioned by my backpack and it’s water-filled Camelbak.

Last year’s Nambe Lake experience, after taking “the easy way.”

There were abundant reasons NOT to be taking this particular hike. The next day, my son and I were scheduled to hike the 13,000 foot Santa Fe Baldy. I could have, should have rested up for the next day’s long, challenging adventure. But oh no, I did not want to miss out on the viewing the splendors of my favorite Alpine lake.

There were five of us that day. Unwisely, I didn’t ascertain that we would be taking the dry land route to Nambe Lake (as opposed to the slippery riverbank route).
A less challenging way, a route which I’ve often hiked, parallels the Nambe River and becomes a bit tricky only at the very end. Once we were at the meadow with one trail going up the “safe” way and the other going to the riverbank, a vote was not taken. The lead hikers took off for the riverbank way and we all followed. (Why did I ignore the mental alarm bells?)

Only when we were clawing our way up the muddy sides of the little river did I realize, with a chill, that I had no business being here. Uneasiness grew into fear, as I saw that we were very scattered and I wasn’t sure I knew the way. I looked above me and saw our lead hiker’s booted feet forging ahead and upward. Next thing I knew, I was lying, my back throbbing with pain, in shallow, rock-filled water, feet heading not up but down. (How had I managed to trip and twist myself into this awkward position?)

Never underestimate the treacherous power of roots!

My hiking friends came quickly in answer to my screams, walked me three painful miles out of the forest, took me to Urgent Care. No broken bones: a good thing. But there was soft tissue battering and bruising. Needless to say, there would be no hike up Santa Fe Baldy with my son, maybe not until next hiking season. Instead, I began days of an acutely sore back and midriff. Out of commission. Down for the count. Miserable.
*******
THREE WEEKS LATER
I’m going to be OK, thanks to friends doing many acts of kindness, the mailman bringing mail to the door, and treatments including arnica, epsom salts baths, a wonder product called “Boswellia,”physical therapy and acupuncture (www.pinoncommunityacupuncture.com). Walking still wears me out, but I’m able to go for a mile, adding a bit more distance each day. For the next weeks or months, it will be “life in the slow lane.” It could have been worse, and after all, the entire episode has made me aware of how much I have for which to be grateful. Lessons that would not have been learned if I’d stayed home.

*********************************************************************

Join author Elaine Pinkerton on alternate Mondays for reflections on adoption and life. Comments invited!

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All in a Day’s Hike

Tags

adoptee, adoption, Connection, Freinds as Family, healing, Hiking, Nature, recovery

“In the deserts of the heart, let the healing fountains start.”-W. H. Auden

Heartfelt wishes expressed in Nature

The day began with alarming news. A lifelong friend, a fellow author, had been moved from Santa Fe’s hospital to a “Medical Resort” in Albuquerque. She was recovering from surgery that removed a cyst on her spine. Her health was already precarious because of Parkinson’s Disease, and now this. I talked to her husband, conveyed to him my love and healing wishes, but I felt powerless to really help the situation.

Feeling disheartened, I phoned my friend Kay (not her real name) and invited her to hike Monte Sol (Sun Mountain) with me. She motored over to my house, and in 15 minutes we were on the path. We found heart-shaped rocks to place in what I’ve come to call our “memory tree.”

We worked our way up the narrow twists and turns to the summit, slightly less than a mile but an 800-foot ascent. The narrow trail up Monte Sol is a series of ever sharper switchbacks. At the top, one must climb boulders, scale gravely areas and step ever more carefully.

Two-thirds of the way up there is a lookout spot – some sofa-like boulders that provide a convenient rest spot. Kay, who’d just come from two weeks at sea level, decided that she would wait there while I went to the top. She needed some time at our 7,000-foot altitude to fully acclimatize. So she rested; I went onward and upward.

As she contemplated the sweeping vistas below – Santa Fe nestled in a high mountain

The Boulder Field

plateau – I hiked swiftly to the top. There, I visited what I’ve come to call “the memory tree.” She’s an old, weathered, dead piñon. Actually, she has a name: “Melanie.” I’ve used this tree for years as a repository. In its branches, I place heart shaped rocks, dedicated to folks who are ill or who’ve passed away. Sometimes I find them on the trail; other times I bring them from home. I placed a heart in one of Melanie’s branches for my ill friend and dedicated a silent meditation for her recovery.

Occasionally I find hearts already in the tree.  Anonymous others have discovered Melanie, placed their stone hearts and no doubt made petitions. It is a gentle way of helping when there’s nothing else we can do.

I said goodbye to Melanie the tree and sent get well wishes to my ill friend. Hurrying, but careful not to skid, I made my way down Monte Sol. Kay, waiting at the rest stop, had been meditating. We completed the downhill trail together.

Always one to come up with good ideas, Kay suggested we go out to lunch to celebrate

Going to a friend’s favorite restaurant

the day.We did, and it was delicious. Organic eggs whipped into an omelet, served on hearty bread.

Since then, I’ve heard that my hospitalized friend is doing better. Her recovery might take months, but she’s in the best possible place. Perhaps the hike I took and the heart I placed may have helped her. I am finding that we are connected in mysterious ways. As an adopted one, today proved to me that in many ways, “friends are the new family.”

Join Elaine on Mondays for reflections on adoption, hiking, and life

Carrying a Heavy Sack

Tags

Adopted daughter, Attitude, birthparents, Family history, Listening, Parenting, Patterns, recovery, Restoration

Carrying a Heavy Sack
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Remembering family history can weigh heavily.

It’s been said that “everyone is carrying around a heavy sack.” The sack, of course, is a metaphor for woes and concerns that come with everyday life situations. Some sacks are heavier than others. Not surprisingly, I feel that the sack of adoptees weighs tons more than most. The issues we adoptees face aren’t the kind that go away easily. As life goes on, the issues simply take different forms.
Such questions as “Why don’t I have a real family tree?”; “Am I repeating the mistakes of my (birth/adoptive) parents?” “If I love someone, will (he/she) abandon me?” and finally, ironically, “If I do not have to solve the problems of adoption, what’s left for me?” I am no longer an “adult adoptee,” but simply “an adult.”
What IS it about being adopted? About not quite belonging and slipping into a feeling of alienation? Picture this. The evening has arrived at last: A fundraiser for Youth Shelters. I’m at the benefit party I’ve been planning for months, and the guests are having a wonderful time. Jean (not her real name) mentions that she knows of a birthmother who had a most wonderful reunion with a son she had to give away when he was just an infant. The meeting, recounts Jean, was completely wonderful and now the reunited mother and son have a great relationship.
Immediately, I recall the not-so-satisfactory meeting with my birthmother and hardly pay attention to what else Jean is saying. Why can’t I be present? After grappling with my adoption angst for so many years, shouldn’t I be less reactionary? Less easily injured and thrown off balance?
Jean is still talking and I tune back in to what she’s saying. She wants to help the mission of Youth Shelters, which is directed toward helping homeless adolescents and young people. Another volunteer! How wonderful. I shove thoughts of my unsatisfactory reunion under the rug and put my cheery facade back into place. The evening is a success and everyone, especially Jean, seems to be having a wonderful time.
I realize that my sack of concerns may never really lighten, but that I am capable of becoming stronger. After all, the family constellation formed long ago. Changing it would be like moving the stars. This is impossible. The only star I can change is

Aspen Vista, Santa Fe, New Mexico

myself.

Poetry Monday

Tags

adoptee, adoption, Adoption Blues, Invisible wounds, memories, Poetry, recovery, Robert Frost

“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

It seems that no matter how far I’ve come, the ghosts of my “adoption past,” unbidden, come back to haunt me. What to do about the attack? I realized that it might be a good idea to do some re-naming. Instead of “Blue Monday,” I’m choosing to call today “Poetry Monday.” The choice of whether or not to go with the painful memories or to push through them and then move on is always available. Pushing, shoving, dislodging, climbing up out of the depths. Along those lines, I offer you a poem that has provided me with great solace throughout the years…
The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Do you recall roads not taken in your life? What choices and twists of fate have shaped your destiny?

Traveling the Chamisa Road

Tags

adoption, Chamisa, Dealing with Adoption, recovery, Restoration, Split at the Root, the goodbye baby, Walking

Chamisa, also called Rubber Rabbitbrush: a perennial deciduous Native shrub, with aromatic, blue-green-grey, feathery foliage in Summer and dense clusters of bright-yellow flowers in early Fall. Deciduous shrub, 3-5 ft. tall & wide. Can prune strongly – blooms on new growth. Sow anytime.

October brings Chamisa into full bloom.

Join Elaine every Monday for reflections on adoption and life.

Though I loved growing up in northern Virginia, with its lovely green deciduous trees and grassy lawns and hills, I willingly adapted to living in a dry land. Here in my adopted state of New Mexico I find myself surrounded by Chamisa. It is scruffy and hardy; it attempts to cover the hard dirt fields, it is everywhere. Though occasionally planted in gardens or used in landscaping, Chamisa’s favorite place is bordering roads.
Many Octobers ago when I first moved to the Southwest, this ubiquitous plant was abloom with small yellow blossoms. I made bouquets and put several throughout the house. Soon I was sneezing my head off. Lesson learned. Too pungent to be used in the house, Chamisa is best left outdoors.
This lowly “rabbitbrush” seems to symbolize the adoptee’s journey of forgiving the past and being in now.  Not resignation, but rather, acceptance. The “Chamisa Road” is about moving beyond invisible wounds, those injuries that are hardest to heal. It’s about traveling from “how to have what you want” to “how to want what you have”
In my experience, the wounds of adoption may never really go away; they simply change form. I’ve written about this in my confessional, The Goodbye Baby-A Diary about Adoption.  Similarly, in her excellent memoir Split at the Root, Catana Tully indicates that restoration may be a lifelong process. The “wounded heart” of the adoptee overrides intellectual decisions. At any time, the feelings of being not quite OK, of not belonging may reappear. They rear their ugly heads and must be stared down.
Adoption recovery, it turns out, is not accomplished by simply writing a memoir and then declaring “OK, I’m healed now.” It is a Sisyphusian undertaking that must be faced afresh every morning.  It is about walking The Chamisa Road.

Running to my Roots, Part One

Tags

birthfather, cultural heritage, finding family, Italy, recovery, running

In Italy, I traveled through miles of my birth family’s history…

As an adult adoptee looking back, one of my regrets was not growing up with my Italian heritage. In my recent memoir The Goodbye Baby: A Diary about Adoption, I lamented this “deprivation.” However, I DID meet my Italian-American birthfather just a few years before he passed away. I was able to travel with him to Abruzzo, where he was born.
When organizing my office last week, I came across this account, written in 2007 but never before published. As you, my readers, will see, I was heavily into running at the time. In retrospect, I realize what a special journey it was, what a privilege that I got this glimpse of my heritage. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed re-living the experience…

Growing up adopted, remembered in diaries

I was an adopted child, five years old when my new parents took over. I met my biological father many years later. Together we visited the town in Italy where he was born, and there I spent an unforgettable week getting to know cousins and doing a lot of running. Giovanni Cecchini began life in the tiny village of San Martino Sulla Maruccina. It’s on the east side of the Italian boot, 17 miles from the Adriatic Sea. Even though I had been adopted by a loving mom and dad and my young life improved dramatically, I longed for many years to find out more about my heritage. Shortly before Giovanni’s death, that wish came true.
Giovanni left the old country at age two. He’d returned to his home village every year since World War II. I spent most of my life without knowing him. Our reunion did not bring the communication I’d hoped for. My father, in ill health, was taciturn and grouchy. Despite this disappointment, I was able to get in touch with my roots. And I discovered the joys of running in Italy.
Being with long-lost Italian cousins, hiking through the fields, hills and olive groves that had belonged to my ancestors, enjoying the scenic beauty of San Martino, with snowcapped mountains to the west and the sea to the east were magical. Best of all, however, was running in my newly-discovered native homeland.
Nikes on my feet, I explored the streets and pathways of tiny San Martino (population 800) as well as nearby countryside. No doubt I was an odd sight. I like to think of myself as the first American to have jogged through the village for the sake of simply running. If the citizens of San Martino were running, it would be to catch a stray sheep, goat or child.
For one thing, the villagers are elderly. The young leave for Pescara or Chieti or Guardiagrele to attend school or take jobs. Furthermore, why would people need to run? The San Martino way of life incorporates vigorous outdoor activities: harvesting olives, gathering firewood, tending animals, plowing fields. My spoken Italian was not versatile enough to know what the natives thought of my running through their streets every day.
But run for the sport of it I did, and for the sheer beauty of the landscape. Running was not only a way to enjoy the incredibly beautiful countryside but also to work off the delicious pasta consumed during three-hour lunches.
San Martino-ans are not into lycra and singlets, so early each morning I donned pedal pushers and an oversized t-shirt borrowed from my teenage sons. I decided it was better to look like a nerd than a shameless exhibitionist. Shortly after the roosters’ last crowing, I left my Aunt Guisipina’s house and jogged up a narrow cobblestone road to the main street of San Martino. Sweeping their porches, small elderly ladies in black stared at me, first in disbelief, then with amusement. After a day or so, they began greeting me with a friendly “Buon Giorno.”